Paddy Scannell
Список книг автора Paddy ScannellLove and Communication
Love and Communication is an intriguing philosophical and religious inquiry into the meaning of “talk” – and ultimately the meaning of “being human.” Taking an historical approach, Paddy Scannell argues that the fundamental media of communication are (and always have been) talk and writing. Far from being made redundant by twentieth-century new media (radio and television), these old media laid the foundation for today’s technologies (AI and algorithms, for instance). Emphasizing these linkages, Scannell makes the case for recognizing what a religious sensibility might reveal about these technologies and the fundamental differences between a humanmade world and a world that is beyond our grasp. Drawing on the pioneering work of John Durham Peters, the book proposes that communication and love go together, which can be understood in two ways: as a human accomplishment, or a divine gift. Ultimately, the essential conundrum of today is highlighted: do we wish to remain in a human> This book draws on a lifetime of academic work and the author’s personal experience. It will be of interest to scholars and students of media and communication, who will welcome this highly original and searching examination of love as communication.
Television and the Meaning of 'Live'. An Enquiry into the Human Situation
This book is about the question of existence, the meaning of ‘life’. It is an enquiry into the contemporary human situation as disclosed by television. The elementary components of any real-world situation are place, people and time. These are first examined as basic existential phenomena drawing on Heidegger’s fundamental enquiry into the human situation in Being and Time. They are then explored through the technological and production care-structures of broadcast television which, routinely and exceptionally, display the situated experience of being alive and living in the world today. It shows routinely in the live self-enactments of persons being themselves and the liveness of their ordinary talk on television. It shows exceptionally in television coverage of great occasions and catastrophes as they unfold live and in real time. Case studies reveal the existential role of television in salvaging the possibility of genuine experience, and in revealing the world-historical character of life today. To explore these questions, the agenda of sociology – its concern with economic, political and cultural life – is set aside. Being in the world is not, in the first (or last) instance, a social but an existential question, as an existential enquiry into television today discovers. Passionate and sweeping in scale, this new book from a leading media scholar is a major contribution to our understanding of the media today.